


Sardines

by misslucyjane



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Magic, Memory Loss, Mind Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:29:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslucyjane/pseuds/misslucyjane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things are missing. Pieces are gone. And Tony can't remember why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [not that this is paris, of course](https://archiveofourown.org/works/805971) by [verilyvexed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verilyvexed/pseuds/verilyvexed). 



> Written for the [Cap/Iron Man](http://cap-ironman.livejournal.com/) Reverse Big Bang, inspired by [Not That This Is Paris, Of Course](http://archiveofourown.org/works/805971) by VerilyVexed. Thank you to Skidmo and Basingstoke for beta.

Pieces are the best he can do. Images, feelings. It's like trying to remember early childhood, a mere flash here and there with no context.

He remembers opening his eyes to Pepper's worried face.

He remembers pain.

He remembers a flash of green light.

He remembers a warm smile, a pair of piercing blue eyes and a hearty laugh, a presence felt in comfortable silence, glasses laid in his palm, red curls cascading over a shoulder.

Beyond that, things are a blur until another award ceremony that he skipped in Las Vegas (Rhodey scolded him about skipping it) and a night spent with a reporter. Did she publish the article? Did he read it? He doesn't remember.

The only thing he knows for certain is that his name is Tony Stark and there's a hole in his chest, filled by a metal cylinder and topped with a disc of light.

***

When he looks at the Manhattan skyline, what should be familiar and comforting only looks ... wrong. It's not the Towers, he's gotten used to their absence even though he hasn't lived regularly in New York for over a decade. But there are other buildings, other rooftops, that are crumbled and broken as if they've come through centuries of decay. There are buildings downtown where multiple floors have no windows and lots of evidence of smashed glass. There are walls painted over, as if Banksy went on a spree and Urban Renewal spreed right after him.

What happened to New York? He doesn't remember -- and when he tries to, even when he tries to look it up on the Web, the pain comes -- so fierce and full that it knocks him flat, and he lies on the floor with his arm over his eyes until he feels Pepper kneel beside him.

He can see Pepper's lips moving but any sound is muffled, as if someone had their hands over his ears. He can see the worry, though, and he knows she's repeating his name.

She presses her cool hands to his face. Her lips move again, in shapes he recognizes. Lie still, she's saying. She's calling a doctor.

"No," Tony croaks, and the single syllable makes his head feel like it's going to split open from temple to temple. Pepper helps him to bed, dims the lights and covers him with a sheet, drawing it no higher than the disc, and leaves the room.

Tony breathes slowly. Eventually the pain eases, reluctantly loosening the vise clasped around his head.

***

A list of places Tony has learned to avoid:

The lobby of Stark Tower. (He jokes to Pepper that it's one ugly-ass Christmas tree in the lobby. She doesn't smile.)

The R&D floors of Stark Tower. (He has his own workshop. No reason to go there, right?)

The roof of Stark Tower. (Because... because... well, he has no reason to go there.)

(And why did he build this thing, anyway? It's a wonder of architecture, but given all the factories, research labs, and testing facilities Stark Industries owns around the world, what's the point of one more building with his name on it?)

(Hilarious train of thought. He's never ridden this particular train before. He'd like to get off now, thanks.)

News stands.

Greek restaurants.

His private workshop.

He was always happiest when he was working, and he even shipped out U and Dum-E from Malibu so he'd have them around, but he hasn't worked for weeks. Months?

He can't remember how long it's been.

When he crosses the threshold into the workshop, the migraine crashes into his head and he cries out in pain as he crumples to the tiled floor. JARVIS calls Happy and Pepper to take him back to bed, and he lies there for almost twenty-four hours, refusing to go to a hospital despite Pepper's pleas and Happy's worried face.

***

The doctor's name is Lucas. Or Luka. Something like that. He's younger than Tony's regular doctor, dark-haired, vaguely British, and he looks at Tony with an expression too like pity for Tony's comfort.

He'd say something about it but his head hurts, and he curls in the chair, his forehead in his hand, as he tries to answer the doctor's questions.

Has he always gotten migraines?

He doesn't remember.

Has he noticed a pattern in the triggers?

He doesn't remember.

The doctor writes, and then puts his notepad aside and says, "Tony. Your assistant tells me you don't sleep. You drink constantly."

"That's not new."

"Your memory is failing you and you're not working."

Tony shifts in the chair. Those are new.

He thinks they're new. He's not sure. He can't remember.

The doctor wants to run tests. Maybe Tony had a stroke, an aneurysm, encephalitis. He's rattling off possibilities when Tony says, "No."

The doctor pauses, his head tilting like a curious bird -- and that's when Tony notices that instead of a caduceus or a St. Luke's medal, Doctor L is wearing a tiny ebony carving, a raven.

Odd.

"Something happened," he says. "I don't remember what and no one can tell me. When I ask what happened, what happened in the blank spots, the migraines hit like someone's trying to keep me from finding out."

"Tony, migraines don't work that way."

He looks at the doctor, bleak. "Mine do."


	2. Chapter 2

When he refuses the tests, Pepper's lips go thin and she says she won't stay and watch him drink himself to death. He waves a hand to her. "Go on, then. Leave me," and cradles his forehead in his head when she does just that.

She'll be back. She always is.

Tony goes out. Why not? He's dying. Must be. Might as well make the most of his last days.

It's late enough, or early enough, that New York City, the city that never sleeps, is at least dozing, and he wanders unhindered from Stark Tower toward the East River. He could walk to Brooklyn, if he wanted.

Or he could walk onto the Bridge, stop in the middle, and never reach the other side.

At least then the pain would stop.

He wanders to the park instead, bottle in hand, the pain receding enough that he feels almost happy. Almost like himself, or what he thinks himself was like, once. He used to be something more, didn't he? More than this pale, shaking invalid.

He sings, his voice quivering, "'I love Paris in the springtime. I love Paris in the fall.'" His voice gains volume and strength as he makes his way through the park. "'I love Paris in the springtime when it drizzles, I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles.'"

He knows of a good view of the river. He used to come here with Maria, long ago. She'd let him play on the grass but always stopped him before he got too close to the river.

Well, he can go all the way to the river now.

He sings, "'I love Paris every moment, every moment of the year. I love Paris and why do I love Paris? Because my lo--'"

There's a figure in the empty park, stock-still against the railing. Someone tall and broad.

Tony inhales as a throbbing takes hold in his left temple. Still he steps forward and says, "Hello?" as his heart pounds and the throbbing deepens along with it. "Hello?"

The figure doesn't move. Tony takes another step, and another, and lays a cautious hand on the broad back.

It's cool and firm. Stone.

It leaves him reeling.

_Nothing hurts._

Not his head, not his chest around the cylinder and the disc, not in his tired feet. Not in ... not in what other people likely call a soul, that inner part that he's never closely questioned.

Tony puts his arm around the statue's neck, leans his head against the statue's shoulder. Asks a question he's never had to ask. "Can I take you home with me?"

[caption id="attachment_3413" align="aligncenter" width="300"][](http://sodaandpie.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/verilyvexed_rb_alt.jpg) Art by VerilyVexed[/caption]

***

Happy finds him before dawn. Coaxes him into the car, drives him home, and doesn't even make a face when Tony starts humming, "'I love Paris in the springtime, I love Paris in the fall...'"

***

Tony contacts everyone he can find in the Parks department to ask about buying a statue. He's sent from person to person, put on hold for hours.

He takes heart in the fact the hold music includes "I Love Paris." It feels like a sign.

Still, no one in the Parks department knows anything about a statue of a tall, broad man in the Brooklyn Bridge Park, not on the Brooklyn side, not on the Manhattan side, not anywhere. It doesn't matter how much money he offers, they can't sell him something that doesn't exist.

"Isn't that a Brooklyn Bridge tradition?" he snaps at one of them, and then apologizes. It's not her fault there are no records of the statue. She offers the notion that it might be the work of a folk artist, left in the park until the artist moves it someplace else, "Like they do by the Golden Gate, with all the garbage that comes through."

But the statue isn't garbage. He is beautiful. And he's the only thing to stop Tony's pain.

***

Tony braces himself outside the door of the workshop. Today. Today's the day. He hasn't worked for ... since ... well, never mind how long it's been, he's lost track of time anyway. He only knows it's springtime because the snow has melted. He hasn't worked since before it snowed.

He opens the workshop door.

Mistake.

He tells Happy, as Happy is half-carrying, half-leading him back to bed, "I think I'm gonna program JARVIS to play 'Oops I did it again' the next time I go near there. Then you can come stop me."

"Funny plan, boss," Happy says, not laughing.

Hours later, when he can focus his eyes again, there's Rhodey at his bedside, looking at him sorrowfully. "Hey," Tony says with all the energy he can muster, which isn't much.

"Don't 'hey' me, Tony."

"I could say 'hidey hidey hidey hey,'" Tony offers. "But I think it would be in bad taste."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Forever?" Tony sits up carefully, in stages, waiting for the migraine to reemerge from where it's lurking in his synapses. He can feel it like the witch in the gingerbread house, just waiting for the children to come and nibble so she can pounce. "I don't know. Since last fall, at least."

"Tony," Rhodey says, stunned. "Geez, Tony. What can I do to help?"

"Nothing," Tony says and gets carefully out of bed. "But thanks. Let's eat something. I think I should eat."

They go to the kitchen. Tony wants to make them BLTs, but the thought of bacon turns his stomach. Tea and toast it is. Again. At least it's something masculine like Earl Grey and not emasculating like chamomile, and someday he maybe can even have _butter_.

Sitting at the curving bar, looking out at the lights of Manhattan, Tony says casually, "So I think I'm going crazy."

Rhodey puts down his mug.

"They want to run an MRI on me, to see if I had a stroke."

Gently, "Why don't you let them?"

"Because that's not it," Tony says, tearing apart his toast. "Except for the migraines, there's nothing wrong with my body. It's my mind that isn't working right. What year is it?"

"2013," says Rhodey cautiously.

"Right. So how come the last thing I remember clearly happened in 2008?"

"The last thing you remember?" Rhodey says cautiously.

"Everything after is a blur. We were in Las Vegas. You were giving me -- I don't remember, some useless piece of plastic or another. And then after that--" He spreads his hands, utterly perplexed. "Where's Obie? What's happened with Stark Industries? What's happened to the last five years? _Why doesn't anything make sense?_ "

Still cautious, "Pepper said we can't talk about that. The migraines--"

"Right!" Tony exclaims. "Explain to me how migraines are triggered by a _subject_!"

"I can't."

"Damn right you can't! And you know the only thing that's helped me? The _only_ thing? A statue that disappeared the next day."

Rhodey pushes the mugs out of the way so he can lean closer too. "I know it's confusing and I know things it's unsettling, but we can solve this. You're not in this alone, Tony."

"Thanks," Tony mutters, and leaves out the part where he's never felt so alone in his life, and that includes the night his parents died.

Tasha hops onto Tony's knee and he scratches her chin absently. Well, he has her, and that's a start, right?

Rhodey frowns. "When did you get a cat?"

"I don't know," Tony says cheerfully. "Remember how I said nothing makes sense anymore?"

"Right, right," says Rhodey, thoughtful. When he reaches over to pet Tasha too she nips at him with a soft, cautionary hiss. "Okay, okay, little lady," he says, holding up his hands with a slight smile. "This statue. Where was it?"

"Brooklyn Bridge Park, but don't bother to see it for yourself. Like I said, it disappeared the next day."

"And what would you have done if it hadn't?"

"Brought it home with me," says Tony promptly. Tasha rubs her head insistently against his hand and he resumes petting her as she commands. "Put it in the garden or something. Admired the... craftsmanship."

"So that's what objectophilia looks like," says Rhodey, and Tony throws the remains of his toast at him.

***

Two more times that week, Tony returns to the park, to the railing by the water. The first time he has Happy with him, and a vague idea that he'll just _take_ the statue and find the artist later to pay them the vast amount he's sure to owe. (And will gladly pay. Gladly.)

They search for hours.

The statue is nowhere to be found.

Finally Happy says, "Maybe it's time to go home, Tony," and Tony admits he has a point. "Don't tell Pepper," he says in reply, because news of him wandering around in the dark won't ease her mind about his health.

The second time, he goes alone, in the daytime. He dresses down -- T-shirt, jeans, leather jacket, sunglasses -- and is able to amble through the park like he's just another fella -- fella, what the hell? -- out for a morning constitutional in a beautiful place. Nature is good for you. Sunshine. Fresh air. Other things that, to him, exist more in rumor than experience.

He doesn't find the statue then, either, and by the time he catches a cab to take him home -- he could call Happy, but he doesn't want Happy to worry, not any more than he already does -- the headache is back, throbbing between his eyes like someone is tapping on his brain with a hammer.

Resigned, he lies down in a dark room with a cold pack over his eyes to wait the headache out. At least it's not one of those brain-busters that make him want to die. Bonus, Tasha decides to be sociable and hops onto the bed with him, and curls against his side, purring like a tiny ginger motorboat. Petting her is as soothing as her purr, especially when she pushes her head against his hand.

Not so much when she sinks her claws into his side or her teeth into his wrist, but that's the peril of cat ownership.

***

He's always been restless, he knows that. Used to be, that restlessness was channeled into creation, inventions, making things that were gobbled up by the aggressors of the world. With his lab denied him, Tony tries at first to occupy himself with television, but the flickering images trigger the migraine -- he's started to think of them as a single entity, a monster that resides in his brain -- and so that experiment doesn't last long. He tries reading. Knitting. Playing Solitaire.

He ends up wandering around Manhattan in the small hours of the morning, humming show tunes to himself and wondering where the fork in the road lay. To one side, the charmed, enchanted life of Tony Stark, where he could have any lover he desired, was admired and respected, was a golden boy; to the other, this life, a rambling shell of a former genius, the family fortune the only barrier between him and every other sweaty-toothed madman in New York.

 _What happened?_ No one can tell him.

Two weeks after the first time he saw the statue, he's passing by the garden to some little brownstone when he sees a familiar, longed-for -- _yearned-for_ \-- shape. This is someone's house and the gate is locked, but since when has a locked gate prevented Tony Stark from getting to something that he wants?

He climbs the wall, makes his way to the broad-shouldered shape, seated on a sandstone bench in front of a little pond, and lays his hand on the cool marble back.

Relief surrounds him like diving into a swimming pool in the hottest day of the summer. He almost weeps. "I've been looking for you. Oh, how I've been looking."

There's only one thing to do if he's going to get any relief tonight. He crawls onto the bench and lays his head on the statue's stone lap. It's hard and cold -- of course, how would it be anything else? -- but it keeps the pain away, and that's all he wants.

He vaguely remembers laying his head in Pepper's lap like this, her fingers gently stroking through his hair to soothe him, but he can't remember when or why. It must have been during a migraine -- she'd never be so familiar if he weren't in terrible pain.

The statue can't stroke his hair but his fevered, throbbing brain is finally at peace, and he's not going to ask for the moon when he already has the stars.

***

The light is warming from gray to golden, birds are chirping in the trees lining the garden walls, and Tony's skin feels tight and rough from sleeping in his clothes, when he realizes that he's still in the garden and that his head is no longer cold.

He blinks, looking up.

"Hi," says the statue. "How'd you sleep?"


	3. Chapter 3

Tony falls off the bench, it's such a shock, and the statue kneels on the grass to help him up. "Slow, careful," he says, and his voice is warm against Tony's ears. "Careful. You'll be okay. You're safe here."

"You were in the park," Tony says stupidly. The statue's fingers are clasped around his arm, and they're warm and humanly soft, even though his arms are capped with bulging muscles and his broad chest and slim waist speak of hours spent with weights and running laps.

Or not. Some bastards are just that lucky.

"I know," the statue says. "I wasn't paying attention to the time and sundown caught me by surprise. Um," he adds after a moment, "I've ... got a condition."

"No kidding," says Tony, still blinking at the statue. His skin is warm, a peachy sort of tone, and he's square-jawed and blue-eyed, impossibly beautiful. Tony would think he's dreaming except he can feel that hand clasped around his arm, the damp grass soaking through the knees of his trousers, the warm rising sun on his skin. No dream is this vivid.

But he has seen this face in his dreams. He's certain of that.

"Come on," the statue says gently and helps Tony stand. "My friends are awake and they want to meet you."

"Friends?" Tony says. He expects to stumble through the garden, with the statue's hand still wrapped around his arm, but they move smoothly as if the statue is just guiding him along instead of tugging him to his doom. "Are they going to call the cops on me? I trespassed. This is trespassing."

"They're not going to call the cops. Frigga told me they've been wanting to meet you for a while. There they are," the statue adds as they approach the house. Funny thing about this garden -- he remembers it from the night before, it was just the little postage stamp of a back yard that most houses have in the city, but once you're inside, it seems vast, lush, overflowing with unseasonal abundance. There's a peach tree, branches heavy with ripe peaches hanging over the breakfast table, and there are strawberry plants, dotted with ruby red fruit and white blossoms, lining the gravel path. Beyond that are roses, lilies, tulips, more flowers than he can name, a jumble of color framed by deep, silvery greens.

At the table are a couple old enough to be Tony's parents, the woman lovely as a screen goddess from another era, the man gray-haired and dignified with one eye covered by a golden patch. There's a black bird on the table, and the man feeds the bird breadcrumbs as Tony and the statue approach. "Ah," says the man in a warm, rich, voice. "There you are, Steven."

"Good morning, Odin. This is him."

"So it is." He rises and embraces Tony, a strong warrior's hug. "Welcome. I am Odin and this is my wife, Frigga."

"Ma'am," says Tony, bashful. The breakfast table is as overflowing with food as the garden is with flowers, and set for four. Tony realizes abruptly that he's starving, that he hasn't eaten anything more substantial than dry toast for days because nothing else would stay down. Everything on the table looks so delicious that Tony clenches a hand to keep himself from falling onto it and stuffing his mouth with eggs and pastries and apples dripping with juice. He licks his lips, remembering the sweet-tangy taste.

"Please, sit," says Frigga. "Eat. You must be hungry after your ordeal."

Tony sits. The statue -- Steven, it's ridiculous to keep calling him 'the statue' when he's clearly a man -- sits too, and begins filling his plate. Tony takes that to mean he can, too, and does, trying not to rush it. "My ordeal?"

"Don't push him, my love," Odin says softly to Frigga, who nods. "Muninn hasn't returned."

"Who?" Tony picks up a cinnamon roll as big as his head, cream cheese frosting spread thickly over the top. The scent is so tempting his stomach growls. "Um, sorry. Excuse me."

"Eat," says Frigga, amused. Her own meal is much smaller, though no less varied, her plate piled with berries and cream, warm scones dripping with melting butter and honey. "No one goes hungry in this house."

"Good philosophy," says Tony. Steven chuckles, and they both fall to eating.

As they eat, Odin says, "We came to New York City to find our missing son. It is a difficult task, made no easier by the strange events that have surrounded your ordeal and Steven's, too."

"What strange events?" There is coffee, so black he can taste the heat of the land in which it grew.

"Have you noticed things missing?" says Frigga. "Not physical objects, but people, events, that should be there and are not."

"I don't know," says Tony and looks at Steven. "There are missing pieces. There are blurs."

"Steven can't remember a thing." She looks at Steven sympathetically, and he smiles a little and butters a biscuit. "We only know his name because of our son's stories of him, as we know yours, Anthony."

Something whispers in his mind, _Magic. There's magic here._ Well, it makes as much sense as anything else, as this enormous garden where it should be tiny, as the man who turns to stone when the sun goes down.

"What is your son's name?" he asks Frigga.

She says, after a glance to her husband, "Thor."

The pain hits Tony at once, hard enough to make him hiss with the force of it, and he presses his fingers between his eyebrows. Odin murmurs something to the bird, and the bird flutters across the table and lands on Tony's shoulder.

"Huginn," says Odin. "Thought. Though what we truly need is Muninn, memory. Muninn can help break the spell and restore what has been stolen away."

"Stolen is a harsh term," Frigga murmurs.

"Loki's magic deserves a harsh response," Odin replies.

The name _Loki_ intensifies the pain from a mere headache to a full-blown migraine, pain so intense that Tony curls forward, clutching his head. The bird, Huginn, chirps softly in his ear but the tiny sound does nothing to pierce the pain.

"Anthony," says Frigga, distressed. "What can we do to help you?"

"I don't know," Tony says. His fingers dig into his temples, as he tries to distract himself from one pain with another.

"You were looking for me," says Steven and lays a hand on Tony's back. "There must be a reason."

As suddenly as the pain arrived with the names, it flees with Steven's touch. Tony exhales and turns toward him, longing to bury himself in that broad chest. He manages a smile. "You're the first good thing to happen to me in I don't know how long."

"Tony," Steve whispers and strokes his back. "I'm here, Tony. I've got you. I'm here."

***

Tony showers, spending blissful minutes under the hot water as it pounds his tense shoulders and neck into relaxation, and when he emerges his rumpled suit has been removed and there are fresh clothes waiting for him. He puts them on, jeans and a white T-shirt, and as he stretches he realizes he feels more like himself than he has for weeks. Months. Years, he suspects.

Frigga told him to rest and recover from the migraine, but he wants to dance instead, and eat and drink. He wants to bounce on the balls of his feet and spin around with his arms out like a kid playing helicopter.

He wants to talk to Steve. He doesn't know what he will say, but it doesn't matter -- the words will come.

He has a feeling that he and Steve will never run out of things to say to each other. It's as comforting a feeling as the clean clothes, the hot shower, and the firm bed where Frigga bade him rest -- and where Steve is waiting for him, denim-covered legs crossed, a smile on his lips when he sees Tony.

"Frigga sent me to make sure you rest," says Steve, leaning back on his hands. He looks like every All-American poster boy that was ever committed to film, like he should be selling anything from Coke to US savings bonds; so wholesome and pure that Tony knows that normally he would be mocking him.

Abruptly Tony knows he _has_ mocked him, though it's usually been more like affectionate ribbing than actual cruelty. He knows, too, that Steve has a certain smile for just those occasions, one he never hesitates to let Tony see.

Tony sits on the bed, gazing at Steve. "Tell me the last thing you remember."

"Coming to in Central Park," Steve says without hesitation. "It was dawn, and there was no one around but a few joggers, and even though I knew where I was in an instant, I didn't know how I got there or anything about myself."

"Nothing before that?"

Steve shakes his head. "Nothing."

Tony sighs and shoves a hand through his hair. "The last thing I remember," he says slowly, "before everything goes blurry and weird, is a flash of green light. After that, that's when things stopped making sense."

Steve frowns, brows furrowing in thought. Tony supposes he ought to be annoyed with how handsome Steve is even when he's serious, but he wasn't -- he finds it as charming as Steve's smile. "Sometimes when I'm changing, I see that, too," he says in a tone of wonder. "It happens so fast, though, I can't describe it in any more detail."

It's a wonder talking about this doesn't have him curled in a ball on the floor, Tony thinks -- and then looks down to see that their knees are touching. So that's all it takes, a touch that small, and somehow he's under whatever protection Steve gives him.

He lays a hand lightly on Steve's shoulder, just as a precaution. "Does it hurt? The change?"

"No," Steve says. "It's like falling asleep. One moment you're awake, the next you're not."

"Good," says Tony. "Bad enough that this happens to you at all." They sit, looking at each other a moment, then Tony says, "We knew each other before this started."

"I think so, too."

"I don't know about our hosts, though."

Steve shakes his head. "Odin told me, when they first started looking after me, that he'd only heard me from their son's description and stories, and found me because of Huginn."

"The bird?"

"The bird," Steve confirms. "Huginn and Muninn disappeared not long before Thor did, but Huginn found his way back to Odin. He's been looking for Muninn, and the trail led here -- which caused Odin and Frigga to realize Thor isn't just extending his visit, he's actually missing. And no one can tell them what happened, because it's like nothing happened -- like Thor has never come here at all."

"The missing pieces," Tony murmurs. "Thor is missing. Other people are, too, and we need to find them as much as Frigga and Odin need to find Thor."

"And Loki, their other son."

Tony feels a shudder go through him, and a twinge at the base of his skull. "Loki," he mutters and presses his hand to his eyes a moment, trying to focus, to fight the pain. Steve covers his other hand with his own, and like that, Tony can breathe more easily, can bear the light. He smiles at Steve gratefully. "Odin and Frigga think he did this."

"As I understand it, yes."

"How?"

"Magic," Steve says simply. "I'm more interested in figuring out why. I want my life back, Tony. I know I had one. I must have. Frigga and Odin haven't told me much -- I think they're afraid of overwhelming me -- but from what I've gathered so far, our lives were far from ordinary."

"I can believe yours is." His gaze sweeps over Steve, and he smiles when Steve blushes.

"Tell me who you are," Steve says, looking away. "All I know about you is what Huginn has told me, which isn't much beyond your name."

"I used to invent things," Tony says. "I used to be brilliant, according to everything I've seen about myself. Used to solve problems before other people even noticed they existed. I used to be--"

"Tony," Steve says. "Stop saying you used to be. You still are. You just have to find it again, like me and the rest of my life. It's not gone forever."

"You," Tony begins, but he has no idea how to finish that thought.

Not in words, anyway.

Steve tastes like berries and cream. He smells like outdoors, like water running over stones, like the first grass of spring. He feels solid under Tony's hands, and his arms go around Tony without hesitation, as if they know exactly where they'll fit. Tony tries to pull Steve to him but it's like tugging a tree, and so Tony is content to stay close to that broad chest and keep tasting him.

"Tony," Steve whispers when they part, and they lean their foreheads together, and Steve's eyes are so, so blue, and Tony knows he's held Steve this closely and looked into his eyes and he doesn't remember when or how and it hurts to know they had something wonderful and it was _stolen,_ it was taken from them. He wants it back so much, so badly, that his body aches with the need to feel it again.

He holds Steve by the back of his neck, and Steve grunts a little under the pressure of Tony's fingers. "Our friends," Tony says. "He took away our friends. Worse than that, he took you away from me."

"You're just getting agitated."

"Damn right I'm agitated! You and me -- try and tell me we're not more to each other than friends. Try and tell me that."

"I can't," Steve says simply. "I don't know what we were to each other, Tony. All I know is that I cure you of the pain this spell puts you under, and you -- you feel like --"

"Like what?" Tony demands when Steve hesitates.

"Home," Steve says softly, meeting Tony's eyes, and Tony releases his grip on Steve's neck and lays his head on Steve's shoulder.

"Whatever we had, I want that back."

"We'll find it, Tony." He lies back, bringing Tony with him, and Tony thinks he should act shocked, _shocked_ , that Steve would be so depraved as to want sex right after breakfast, but Steve is kissing him again and it feels too good to tease him.

In what he suspects is far, far too long, Tony thinks, _I'm the luckiest guy alive._

***

When Tony was a boy, his parents used to summer at Cape Cod. The beach house -- a six-bedroom "cottage" -- was one of his favorite places to be, because it meant no interruptions of phone calls and tobacco-smelling men demanding time with his father, no nights of his mother anxiously watching the drive for the line of black cars to return, no murmured conversations behind closed doors ending with "Howard!" as his father fixed himself another scotch.

He had a nanny in those days; that year she was a young woman from the Netherlands who was as austerely beautiful as a Hitchcock blond. They went to the beach daily, since it was mere steps away, but Griet never went into the water and tried to keep Tony from swimming far from the shore.

One afternoon he teased her, running into the surf and then out again, while she called fretfully, "Tony, Tony, it is too far, come back!" and he laughed and danced at the water's edge. His parents were closer to the house, sheltered by a red-and-white striped beach umbrella, and there had been a lunch of hot dogs and potato salad earlier. He felt happy. He felt like other boys.

He ran back out into the water, shouting, "Mother! Griet! Look at me!" as he went out beyond where the waves broke against his knees, against his thighs, against his chest.

And then he did go too far.

He could remember the sensation of the water closing over his head as something pulled him down like an invisible hand.

He could also remember a hand, a real one, closing around his wrist and yanking him out of the dark.

When they were sure he was still breathing, his father shouted at him never to be so reckless again and his mother kissed him over and over, running her hands over his hair and his face, and Griet sobbed in Dutch. (She didn't last beyond the summer, but Tony often thought he owed his preference to tall blonds to that very formative year.) And Tony clung to his father that night like he rarely had before and never did after, and thought, _Daddy saved me. Daddy saved me._

Lying in bed with Steve feels like that. Not like drowning, but like being pulled out, like being able to breathe again.

Steve dozes on his chest. His blond hair is tousled, his face is still flushed. Tony traces his cheekbone and his solid jaw, and knows, _knows_ like he knows breathing in will fill his lungs, that they were everything to each other.

"Is that why you can protect me?" he whispers, and Steve rubs his cheek against Tony's chest with a soft wordless murmur. "Through all of this, you knew you could take care of me?"

"Maybe I was your nanny," Steve murmurs, and gives him a sleepy smile.

"I stopped having a nanny when I went to college at fourteen," Tony says primly. "And you're not my bodyguard -- I already have one. You're my live-in lover. Betcha."

"No bet." He kisses Tony's neck. "I know you're right. You and me, we lost a lot when we lost each other. But we'll find it again. I know it."

"First we have to find that bird. Muninn. And we have to find our friends."

Steve leans on his elbow and gazes at Tony. "Thor, and the others we don't remember yet we know they exist. This isn't just a needle in a haystack, Tony, this is -- this is setting sail without a star chart and a map."

"If I recall my history," says Tony, "that's how they discovered everything interesting."

Steve chuckles and kisses his forehead. "I love this mind."

"Mm," Tony murmurs, closing his eyes -- and then they pop open and he says, "Say that again."

"I love your mind," Steve says uncertainly, though he's smiling. "What is it?"

"Pain," Tony says. "And the absence of pain. Steve." He sits up and Steve sits back, watching him closely. "I haven't been able to think for months. I've been in so much pain I haven't been able to do the one thing I've always been able to do -- _think_. I'm an inventor, Steve, I'm an engineer. I make things. But it all starts up here." He taps his forehead, between his brows.

"And that was taken away," Steve says, eyes growing wide in understanding. "When I'm a statue I don't think, I don't even dream -- it's like I don't exist. And without a past, I may as well not exist at all."

"I'll bring you back," Tony promises and holds Steve's face to kiss him fiercely. "I'll bring you all back."

"We'll bring each other back," Steve says and kisses him. "We need to find Muninn. We need to find our friends. If our thought and memories were stolen, you know theirs have been, too. But how, Tony? How do we find them in a city of millions -- in a world of _billions_? We don't know anything about them, not even their names."

"We have one name. We start there. We need to talk to Huginn." He gives Steve a lopsided smile. "Ever had a conversation with a raven?"

"Only this one," says Steve and grabs his pants.


	4. Chapter 4

They find Odin the garden, his rough warrior fingers gentle as he picks enormous red strawberries from the low-lying plants. Huginn hops among the mounds of soft topsoil, and gives a chirp when he sees Tony and Steve.

Odin looks up as well, and brushes dirt from his hands. "You have found me in meditation, gentlemen."

"It looks more like you're picking strawberries," observes Tony.

"One and the same. What can I do for you?"

"We'd like to talk to Huginn about what happened to Muninn," says Steve. Huginn flits up from the strawberry patch to perch on Steve's shoulder. "Oh -- hello," says Steve, looking startled but pleased, and Huginn nips at a lock of his hair.

"So," says Tony, "does he understand us?"

"Of course," says Odin mildly. "Speak to him as you would any intelligent creature."

Tony steps closer to where Huginn sits on Steve's shoulder. He ducks his head to peer into the bird's bright black eye, and Huginn tilts his head and gazes back.

"Tell me what happened," Tony says simply.

 _We were stolen,_ says a voice in his head -- croaky but gentle, less piercing than a chirp or scold. _Stolen by Loki the silver-tongued, and used to subdue his enemies._

Tony jolts, startled, but nods. "Are we his enemies? How? Why?"

 _You are the Avengers,_ says Huginn, sounding incredulous. _You have thwarted his plans for conquest and revenge, again and again. He hates you all with a pure and burning rage. That is why he stole what is most precious to you -- each other._

"Each other?" Tony whispers.

"What is he saying?" murmurs Steve.

Tony's breath hitches and his eyes sting. He tells Steve, "Loki stole us from each other. All of us." He asks Huginn, "How many of us are there?"

_Six. The Captain. The Man of Iron. The Other. The Widow. The Archer. The Son of Odin._

There's a twinge in Tony's temple, and he rubs the pulsing blood vessel with his fingertips. Steve reaches for his hand and the throb recedes at his touch.

"So small," Tony murmurs. "Yet we keep defeating a god."

 _Small but mighty,_ Huginn tells him. _But two have found each other, the Captain and the Man of Iron. It remains only to find the rest._

"How? How do we find them? Where do we find them?"

 _Ah._ The raven spreads his wings. _There is the riddle._ He gives a beat of his wings and takes to the air.

The three of them stand watching, until Huginn circles above them and the thought is put in Tony's mind: _To the hunt, Man of Iron!_

He gives Steve's hand a tug. "Come on, Captain. To the hunt!"

***

At the tower, Stark Tower, Huginn leads them through the lobby to the elevators with nary a pause. The lobby is frenetic with activity, as suits a crowded workplace during business hours, but still a few people stop to marvel at the raven flying freely through the pristine atrium. A few more also stop to marvel at the sight of their CEO, but as if they all got the memo none of them try to stop him for a chat. 

Tony glances at his companion. Must be Steve's doing -- big, blond, and broad doesn't exactly spell intimidating, but there's a determination in his face that says anyone who attempts to stop them will get plowed under.

As they hurry, Steve says softly to Tony, "You called me Captain."

"Huginn said the Captain and the Man of Iron had found each other. If I'm the Man of Iron -- and I have no idea what that means -- then you must be the Captain."

"Captain of what?"

Tony grins at him. "Ah," he says in a lofty tone like the one Huginn had used. "There's the riddle." He pauses, struck suddenly by the unseasonal decorations in the vast atrium, centered around an enormous evergreen as if it were still Christmas. "Steve. What do you make of that?"

Steve pauses to look at the tree. "It's a strange choice."

"Very strange," Tony murmurs, and then Huginn gives an impatient chirp and they catch up to him.

Huginn leads them to the penthouse, Tony's private apartment, and perches on the bar. He tilts his head to fix them with one bright black eye, then the other.

"Steve and I found each other purely by chance," Tony says. "We'll never find them if we rely on that."

"What were you doing when you found me?" says Steve.

"Wandering in the park." He pauses, embarrassed. "Singing."

Steve smiles, looking surprised and touched. "Singing?"

"Sometimes I sing." Tony gazes at him -- a challenge.

Steve crosses the room and takes Tony's face in his hands. He kisses Tony soundly. "When this is over," he whispers, "I want to hear you sing, just for me."

Tony nods, aware that he's gone starry-eyed and moony-faced as Steve gazes at him with fondness and affection, and Huginn gives a chirp. _No time for play, Man of Iron!_

Where Tasha came from, Tony has no idea, but suddenly there's a streak of ginger cat on the bar and Huginn squawks as her silky white paws pin him to the carpet. Her tail twitches and her ears are alert as Huginn thrashes, to no avail.

"Bad Tasha!" Tony scolds and approaches them carefully, worried she'll sink her claws into Huginn's breast, magical raven or no. "Bad cat!" He picks up Tasha and she hisses, and he scratches her head as she flails. Huginn hops to his feet and glares at her from one eye.

"Poor puss," says Steve and joins Tony in stroking her soft ginger fur. "No hunting the--"

It hits them at the same time -- Tony can see it in Steve's wide eyes and the look of shock on his face, which he knows must be mirrored on his own, as the knowledge hits them.

Her name is Natasha Romanov.

Code name: Black Widow.

As dangerous as she is beautiful, a woman of mystery and silence, with a wry sense of humor and a rarely-seen smile, and Tony always feels like a champion for the day whenever he coaxes her into showing it.

Huginn's voice in Tony's head is peevish. _The Widow is cunningly disguised._

"The Widow," Steve murmurs.

"She beat up Happy once in the boxing ring."

"No! Who's Happy?"

"My bodyguard." He looks down at Tasha, who is serenely grooming a paw. "If he were transformed into something, it would probably be a VW Bug." He looks up at Huginn, who flits up the bar again and preens his feathers. "What just happened?"

_You completed a circle. The greater the circle becomes, the more your knowledge of each other will grow._

"So once we're all together, we'll remember everything?" He looks down at Tasha again, as she makes herself comfortable in the crook of his arm. Her claws lightly poke his skin, as if to remind him that she's a hunter and not just something small and cuddly. "I hope you remember all the times you bit me once you're human again, kid."

"I think," says Steve, a smile lurking on his mouth, "that she bites you when she's human, too."

"Shut it," Tony says and stalks to Huginn on the bar. The bird takes a hop back and Tasha perks up, her nose twitching. "Information," Tony demands, and Steve says, "Tony," in a warning tone. "Information, Huggy Bear, or I'm putting her down."

Huginn hops back, and a rumble starts in Tasha's tiny frame. _Loki Silver-Tongue hid your friends where they could be found,_ he tells Tony, and Tony relates his words to Steve. _Even Muninn is hidden in plain sight. They are here, in your tower, hidden like princesses behind a wall of thorns. But how they can be found is known only to Loki. But you and the Captain, it is within your means to locate them._

"But we don't know anything," says Steve. "We didn't even know the cat is one of us until you said so."

 _Natasha Romanov is clever and quick,_ responds Huginn. _Very like a cat._

"So we need to find critters like our friends," muses Tony.

_Not only creatures. Objects. Loki robbed you all not only of your memories, but of your thoughts, as well._

"I can think," murmurs Steve.

"Only half the time," Tony reminds him. "The rest of the time you're basically an oversized garden gnome. And I've been barely been able to string two thoughts together for months, thank you, migraines."

 _Thought and memory._ Huginn tilts his head, black eyes sparkling. _The difference between intelligent creatures and mindless beasts._

"Mindless beasts," murmurs Tony, and lifts up Tasha by the scruff to look into her eyes. They are cat eyes, no mistaking them for human. She even relaxes like a kitten in its mother's mouth as he holds her. "How do we cure them?"

_I know not, Man of Iron._

"Maybe we need to be together," says Steve. "We collect everyone into one room. Maybe being together will break the spell completely."

"It's worth a try." Tony asks Tasha, "Is there any point in asking you to stay put?"

She blinks sleepy eyes at him. Her tail twitches.

"Huginn, you're coming with us," says Steve, and the raven flits to his shoulder. "Where should we start?"

***

They decide to start at the bottom of the Tower, in the parking garage. "It's like a scavenger hunt," Tony says to Steve as they wander among the cars. "Only we don't have a list."

"I think it's more like Sardines," Steve replies. "We're hunting each other and we'll all be together in the end."

Tony smiles at him fondly. "You're the sentimental one, I see."

"And you're the pragmatic one," Steve says. "I think that's why we work."

 _Your friends are not here,_ says Huginn, and they get on the elevator to try the next floor.

Several levels of garages and HVAC, and they reach the lobby. It's pulsing with life as only suits a busy workplace at lunchtime, and several people stop and stare -- at Tony, at Steve, at the raven who hops between Tony's shoulder and Steve's -- as they wander past the water features, planters, and the big evergreen tree.

Tony stops at the tree. There are other trees, of course, most far more exotic than an evergreen, and Tony knows he has botanists on his payroll whose sole responsibility is to keep this little ecosystem running. So why an evergreen -- why a decorated evergreen when it's not Christmas for months?

"It smells good," Steve remarks. "It smells like the redwood forests."

"What do you say, bird?" Tony asks Huginn, who lifts off from Tony's shoulder and flies around the tree. People nearby stop their hurrying to watch the bird in flight, and Steve slides a hand across Tony's lower back as they watch in silence.

Huginn completes his inspection and lands in front of Tony, his claws clicking on the stone lip of the planter. _It is the Other._

"The Other," says Tony. He climbs into the planter and lays his hand on the rust-colored trunk. Steve climbs in after him and lays a hand on the trunk, too, and Huginn flies through the branches and lands on Tony's shoulder.

It hits Tony like the migraine, but instead of pain it's -- it's _knowledge_ , that this person, the man transformed into this tree, is his friend, his comrade, his brother in the exploration of truth and discovery. When he's the Other Guy he's big and green and terrifying, but when he's not, he's as steadfast as an evergreen.

"Bruce," Tony whispers, "his name is Bruce."

"I," Steve begins. "I don't remember, not exactly, but I know him. I know that I know him. We'll get you out of there," he promises as he runs his hand over the bark.

"We can't take this up to the penthouse, says Tony with a frown.

"Once we've found the others we'll bring everyone here." He grins at Tony. "That was kind of neat, wasn't it? Like completing a circuit."

Tony makes a smoochy face at him. "You complete me," he coos, and Steve blushes, still grinning.

They continue the search, startling Tony's employees as they pop into the various departments. It's even more like a game now -- if three of them were a statue, a cat, and a tree, what could the others be?

"The son of Odin," says Tony as they take the stairs further up. "The Archer."

"Frigga and Odin said Thor is the god of thunder. If Natasha Romanov is quick and clever like a cat, and Bruce is a big and solid as a redwood, then what would Thor be?"

"Loud?" Tony suggests and pulls open the glass door to a gleaming reception area.

The receptionist gets to her feet with a startled, "Mr. Stark!"

Tony waves her off. "We won't be long. We're looking for something."

"Of course, Mr. Stark. How can I help you?"

"We might be looking for something that sparkles, something loud, or something long and pointy."

Her face solemn, the receptionist holds out a silver-plated letter opener.

 _Not the Archer,_ Huginn informs him. _Nor is it the son of Odin._

Tony focuses on the girl's jewelry instead. "Where did you get that?" he says, pointing to the silver bird's wing pendant hanging around her neck.

She put a hand on it a moment. "It was left on my desk a few months ago. There was a bow around it, so I've always thought it was a secret admirer. There's an inscription, too."

"May I see it?" Tony asks and she unclasps the silver chain and gives him the necklace. Inscribed in tiny letters along one edge, it reads, "I see better from a distance."

Steve gives him a hopeful look, then lays his hand on top of Tony's.

And Tony knows he is the Archer, the Hawk, calm and lethal, whip-smart, street-smart, the only person Natasha relaxed around until the rest of them came along.

"Clint," Steve murmurs. "Hawkeye. Like a sharp-shooter."

"Can I have this?" Tony says and drops the necklace into his pocket. "It's not from a secret admirer, I'm afraid, honey -- just someone with a terrible sense of irony."

"Of course, Mr. Stark," the receptionist says, still looking starry-eyed, and Tony makes a mental note to send her something tasteful to replace it.

***

They continue the search, but by the time they reach Tony's penthouse they're out of ideas, and sunset is approaching.

Tony scoops up Tasha. "Will you stay here tonight?" he asks Steve. "You'll be as safe here as you would be in Frigga's garden, and we can keep on looking in the morning."

"I'll stay," Steve says, with a look in his eye that makes Tony shiver in anticipation. "I'd rather sleep next to you than spend one more night as a statue, though."

Huginn's claws dig into Tony's shoulder, and he yelps in protest. _The hunt is not over yet!_

"Then tell us where to look, smart guy," Tony says. He'd laid the necklace carefully on top of the bar, and tried setting Tasha beside it to see if that made anything happen. She only sniffed it a few times and then hopped down again, far more interested in Huginn -- who was careful to stay far away from anything Tasha could jump off to chase him.

"Clint was a wing," Steve murmurs, picking up the necklace. "Bruce is a tree. I was a statue. Men of action, made as still as toy soldiers."

"Thor would be reduced to stillness, too," Tony says.

"And like you said -- it would ironic, somehow. Loki is Thor's brother, but they're enemies." Steve's expression sobers. "His transformation would be worst of all."

Tony looks at Steve a moment, and then leaves the penthouse for the landing pad outside. He had no idea what it's for -- it's too small for a helicopter, and and even he has yet to perfect the hovercar. If Steve is right, if they're all men of action, he doesn't know what sort of action he does. His own past, what he knows about himself, still isn't clear -- the bits and pieces are still scattered -- but he hopes that once they're all together, his past will fit together, too.

Steve follows him outside. "Tony? Are you okay?"

Tony squint up at the top of the tower and shields his eyes from the sun. "Can you see up there?"

Steve squints at it, too. "Yeah. What are you looking for?"

Tony looks at him. "If Thor is the god of thunder, what would piss him off most?"

"Not being able to control the thunder anymore?"

Tony points at him, and then at the roof. Steve's gaze follows his finger. "Lightning rod."

"Son of a gun," says Steve. "How do we get up there?"

***

After five p.m., Stark Tower clears out. It's not entirely empty, of course -- there are cleaning crews, R&D developers working late, security guards -- but enough people are gone that Tony feels no shyness about bringing the necklace, lightning rod, and cat to the tree in the lobby, Tasha in a satchel, her head and paws poking out of the slit and her nose twitching with interest.

He and Steve climb into the planter. Steve holds the necklace in one hand and the lightning rod in the other, and Tony takes Tasha out of the satchel. They look at each other, and then each place a hand on the tree.


	5. Chapter 5

When Tony was a child, he learned things so quickly and so completely that he could scarcely remember a time when he didn't know them. Machines and circuits he understood far faster and sooner than he understood people. They fit together like music. There was an order, a simplicity to the things he made, and he could remember the thrill of discovery far better than he could remember learning the actual steps of creation and assembly.

What happens beneath the tree is like that. One moment they are just two guys with a random bunch of objects like the world's most mundane scavenger hunt, and the next they are Tony, Steve, Bruce, Thor, Natasha and Clint, sprawled on the soft grass in the planter. Tony knows that he knows them -- and from their faces he knows they know him, too -- though he isn't still quite certain how they came to be this oddball group and what they experienced together.

But he also knows that a love for them, fierce and big, takes hold in his chest. They'd been gone from him for so long, and he'd been missing them so much, that the rest of his life felt undone without them. They're his family. He's going to keep them.

They are all still holding hands as they look around, stunned and blinking, and then Steve takes off his plaid overshirt and gives it to Natasha. She looks amused as she takes it, as if her nakedness doesn't bother her a bit but she'll concede to Steve's sense of modesty, and shrugs it on.

"So," she says as she buttons, "who do we punish for this?"

"I'm still not certain," Tony says. "We have theories. We'll have to talk about them later, though -- let's get some clothes on you guys and Steve to a safe place. If the spell's not completely broken he's going to transform into a statue any minute now."

"Of course he is," says Clint, and Natasha slides an arm around his shoulders in a brief moment of affection.

"Spell," says Thor as they walk to the elevators. He, too, is unconcerned by his nudity, while Bruce looks like he's one wrong look from grabbing a fire extinguisher to cover himself. "It sounds like Loki's doing." He pauses. "I have a brother named Loki, yes?"

"Yes," Steve tells him, and holds the elevator doors open until they're all aboard. "Your parents are here, too, looking for the two of you."

"That is... not as good news as it should be," says Thor.

The doors slide closed and the elevator begins its climb. Bruce still hasn't said a word, and Tony nudges him. "Bruce? You okay, buddy?"

"I was a _tree_ ," Bruce replies.

"Is that a yes or a no?" Bruce looks at him, wry, and Tony grins in response. "A shower and some food and you'll be right as rain. Cross my heart."

The elevator stops and the doors open to reveal several researchers in white lab coats. Both groups stare at each other for a beat or two, then Tony says, "You folks probably want to wait for the next one," as one of the researchers says, "Maybe we should wait for the next one."

***

Tony's clothes are too small for Thor and too big for Natasha, so Thor has to make do with sweat pants and Natasha rolls up the cuffs of a pair of jeans and ties the tails of Steve's shirt around her waist. Once they're all showered and dressed they gather in the main room of Tony's penthouse to eat delivery pizzas and keep Steve company until the sun goes down.

They talk as they eat, about what they remember, what they don't. They know each other's names -- they know the closeness that exists between them, if the comfort they have in leaning against each other and reaching over each other for another slice is anything to go by. But none of them really remember what happened, though they agree with Tony that the last thing before the long blankness begins is a flash of green light. Huginn hops around the living room, pecking at the crusts the humans break off for him, contributing little -- at least, not that Tony can hear.

Finally Steve murmurs to Tony, "It's that time," and they slip outside.

"Do you want to sit or stand? I think if you want to stand, you should be at the end of the landing pad, there. It'll look cool."

Steve leans against a concrete planter instead and smiles at Tony, his gaze affectionate. "I feel a lot better, knowing they're okay. Don't you?"

"Considering I had no idea any of them existed this morning, _God_ , yes, do I ever." He leans against the planter too, gazing back at Steve. "The only thing that would make this better is knowing you're okay, too."

"I will be," Steve says. "I bet when our memories are restored, that'll break the spell entirely." A beat passes as they gaze at each other, and then he adds, "I want to kiss you but I'm afraid I'll change in the middle of it and hurt you somehow."

"I want to kiss you too," Tony confesses. "If I kiss you while you're stone, would that be weird?"

"Yes, Tony," Steve says gently.

"Guess it can wait until morning, then." He drags his gaze away from Steve to look out at the city, and the sun sinking beyond the horizon. "I'll come out here at sunrise with coffee for you. I'll make breakfast, too. It won't be as grand as Frigga's spread, but I do sometimes manage to make bacon without burning it, and toast is easy. I can do toast."

"I'm sure you make great toast."

"You're just humoring me, Rogers."

"Yes, I am," Steve says cheerfully. "Because out of all of this, I'm absolutely sure of one thing, and that's that I'm crazy about you and you're crazy about me. So I figure that gives me some license to not always take you seriously."

"I think very few people take me seriously unless I'm being serious." He taps his foot against the planter. "Is this how you want to spend the night? Perched next to the azaleas?"

"I think so," says Steve. "Perched next to the azaleas and looking at you. Please be the last thing I see tonight, Tony."

"That sounds strangely morbid," Tony says but stays put. Darkness is falling, and he knows it's going to happen any moment now, any moment he's going to have eight hours without Steve. He hates it already. "You're right," he says rapidly, hoping to beat the approaching night, "I am crazy about you, I don't remember why exactly yet but I know that you're--"

"Sh, Tony," Steve says, raising a hand to press a finger to Tony's lips. "It's okay. It can wait." His hand drops and Tony's breath catches as the sun sinks completely and they're enveloped in full night.

He doesn't know what he expects to happen, but it's not Steve's skin remaining peachy and soft, and not for Steve to blink with surprise and press his hands to his body, with an awestruck, "Tony? Am I dreaming?"

"You're okay," Tony says, grabbing him by the front of his shirt. "You're okay, Steve. You're okay."

Steve kisses him, arms going around his neck. Tony's sure they're kissed each other a hundred times before, a thousand, maybe, but still it feels like something new and delicious and wonderful.

They're tangled up in arms and tongues, trying to grip each other tighter, hold each other closer, when there's lazy applause from the landing pad. Tony looks up, his arms still protectively around Steve, and sees a dark-haired man in a hand-spun green shirt and black leather pants, outlined against the lights of the city.

"So touching," the man drawls. "I had no idea. Gives all of this a delicious--" He shivers, inhaling with a hiss. " _Frisson._ "

"Dr. Lucas?" Of course he isn't, Tony realizes -- if course the Trickster was keeping a close eye on the victims of his tricks.

"Loki," says Steve flatly.

" _You're_ behind all of this?" Tony takes a step toward him but Steve hangs on to him with a soft, "Don't, Tony."

Before Loki can make a move the doors slide open and everyone else piles out, with beers and slices in their hands. "We thought we'd keep you company, Tony," says Clint, his arm around Bruce's neck, "since you're keeping Steve company -- oh." He stops short, as they all do, when they see Loki. Even Huginn on Thor's shoulder perks up his head.

"Who are you?" says Thor.

"Oh, my dear brother," says Loki. "The spell isn't entirely broken, is it?" His eyes flick to Steve. "Only halfway. I was _so_ looking forward to seeing you as a work of art, Captain Rogers."

"I like him human," Tony growls, but then he notices that Natasha is stroking Bruce's back, and Bruce is breathing very slowly and deeply. It's not the time for fighting, not when they have no weapons and the only thing the only thing they know about this man is his name.

"So I see," drawls Loki, and then strides from the landing pad to face them, his boots soundless on the concrete. He's angular and pale, his eyes piercing, his smile nearly a snarl. "What an interesting wrinkle. Yet it still took you months to find him, and all your lost friends as well. So much for true love."

"You took our _memories_ ," spits Steve. "You took our _thoughts_."

"Such a wonderful game it was, too. Deciding on the perfect punishment. Hiding you away." He rubs his hands together. "Waiting for the one remaining player to even realize he was in the game."

Natasha crosses her arms. "You immobilized all of us except me and Steve. Why?"

"You don't remember?"

Natasha stares at him.

"Him," Loki jerks his head to Steve, "I can only now explain. Our dear Tony kept him halfway human. While you," he smiles at Natasha, close enough to her that her eyes follow him as he begins to slowly circle her, "well, I've always liked you best."

Natasha's lips twitch. Tony suspects it's as close as she gets to a smile.

"Steven says our parents are here," says Thor, and Loki's attention shifts to him. "Huginn will summon them."

"Oh, but the game isn't over yet. Not until you release Muninn." 

Huginn gives an impatient flap of his wings.

"How do we do that?" Tony demands.

"Don't you remember?" Loki gives a feral grin, as if he enjoys this game far more than he knows he should. They all watch him stonily, and he sighs. "Oh, very well. You are all more fun as inanimate objects." His gaze shifts to Tony, his piercing eyes shining in the night.

The migraine grips Tony, so abrupt and heavy that he cries out and takes a step back, his hand over his eyes to block out the lights of Manhattan. His friends start for him, saying, "Tony, Tony, what's wrong?" their hands reaching out in protection and support.

Loki's voice cuts through them all, sharp and domineering. "Stay away from him! Tony Stark alone was left to wander the city and search for you, and yet he did nothing for months for this very reason. It hurt too much," he says in a voice like a whiny child, his lips turning down in a pout.

"Stop hurting him!" Steve orders, his hand gripping for Tony's shoulder. Instead of the same wave of comfort he has always brought, the touch only increases the pain and Tony drops to his knees. Steve lets him go with a soft, "Oh, God, Tony, I'm sorry."

"You want me to release Muninn and restore your memories, restore the memories of your deeds and times?" Loki jerks his chin toward Tony. "It depends on him."

"What does he have to do?" Steve demands, kneeling near Tony, his hands clenched as if to keep himself from touching Tony again.

"He has to give me a memory." Loki smiles as if he already knows he's won.

The others start to protest -- what Loki's asking is impossible, they don't remember anything -- and Tony staggers to his feet. "Is that what this pain is?" he says to Loki, taking a step toward him. "My memories trying to restore themselves?"

"Sometimes magic does what it wishes," Loki says with a shrug. "Well, Man of Iron? What memories can slip through my barrier?"

Tony starts a cutting retort, but then only closes his eyes. He has memories. He's had them all along.

A pair of glasses laid in his palm.

"Trust," he murmurs.

A cascade of red curls sweeping over a shoulder.

"Strength."

A pair of blue eyes and a hearty laugh.

"Joy."

A figure beside him in comfortable silence.

"Companionship."

A warm smile. Gentle hands on his skin. A soft laugh against his neck.

_Steve._

"Love," says Tony and opens his eyes.

There's a flash of green light and the necklace around Loki's neck gives an impatient tug, its force jerking Loki's entire body. Loki rips off the necklace with a disgusted snort, and the little ebony carving starts to fall to the ground. Halfway, it twists and grows in the air, until it's a full-grown raven rising in the air, his wings spread wide. 

"Muninn," whispers Thor. "Go to your friend," he tells Huginn, who hardly waits for permission -- he alights from Thor's shoulder and they circle around each other, joyously squawking, before zipping away from the tower and down into the city.

Loki rubs his neck, scowling.

"I'm guessing the magic did what it wanted to then, didn't it?" Tony says to him and offers a hand to Steve to help him up. Steve looks a bit stunned, but puts his hand in Tony's.

"I remember you," he says softly as he rises.

"Me too, Cap," Tony says, and for a few minutes they all touch each other, lightly, calling each other by their many names, as if to reassure themselves that all is well.

Finally Thor turns to Loki, who is scowling still as he leans against the azalea planter. "Would you like to wait for Mother and Father to arrive or should we meet them halfway?"

"As ever," says Loki in an annoyed tone, "I suspect I have little say in the matter."

"You have none," affirms Thor.

"Wait, wait," Tony says, holding up his hands. "Before we break up this party, there's still the matter of my stuff." _Clint's bow and arrows, Natasha's guns, Thor's hammer, Steve's shield, the suits._ "Where are they?"

"Locked away in your work room," says Loki with a sigh. "That was why I kept you out."

"Of course. C'mon, kids." He jerks his head to the elevator. "We aren't _us_ until we've got all that back." He holds the door open for everyone to troop through, but says, "Go on, I'll be along in the next elevator," as he waves them ahead. Steve looks like he'd rather stay, but he goes down to Tony's workshop with the rest.

When the elevator door closes, Tony leans against the wall and covers his eyes once more. The pain is gone -- forever, he hopes -- but no matter how he searches his memories he can't find what he's most desperate for: _Steve_ , falling in love with Steve, those hundreds of kisses he was so certain they've shared, the first time they fell into bed together, the life he was certain they had built. It was so _easy_ \-- surely they've done it before, surely they've been deeply in love for years?

Otherwise, where did this come from?

"They're waiting for you," Tony mutters and gets on the elevator.


	6. Chapter 6

"You okay?" Bruce says to Tony softly as they bid each other good night one more time. Thor will take Loki to Odin and Frigga -- from there, they will handle him, and they're welcome to him as far as Tony is concerned -- and the others will stay here, in their apartments in Stark Tower.

Because of course he gathered them close to him. Tony's always been pretty good at creating a chosen family, no matter how small.

And tomorrow, he supposes, they'll go back to being superheroes. Tomorrow the world will remember they exist and treat them accordingly. Tomorrow Pepper will remember she's the CEO of Stark Industries and not his assistant anymore, and Happy will go back to looking after her, and Rhodey may even put on the War Machine suit again -- and all three of them won't look at him with worry and concern anymore.

Well. He smiles grimly to himself. Not as often, anyway.

"Yeah," he tells Bruce. "I'm okay."

Bruce nods, like he doesn't quite believe it yet but is willing to humor him. "And you and Steve?" he asks in an even softer tone. "I figured for a while there was something going on there, but I had no idea--"

"Nothing was going on," Tony says. "Good night, Bruce."

"Tony," Bruce says.

"Sleep," Tony replies. "Catch some Z's. Drift off to the Land of Nod. Visit Mr. Sandman. I haven't had a good night's sleep for almost a year, did you know that? While you guys nestled against the bosom of a pretty girl and communing with nature, I wasn't sleeping. So, good night, ladies, good night, good night." He gets back into the elevator and exhales slowly as it bears him to the penthouse.

"Alone at last," he says to the empty rooms, and then jumps a yard when Steve says, "Not quite," and gets up from the sofa.

"How'd you get in here?"

"JARVIS likes me," Steve says, and he even manages not to look smug about it.

"That's it, JARVIS," announces Tony. "No Christmas bonus this year and you're working on your birthday."

"I don't have a birthday, sir," says JARVIS in his mild way.

Tony grabs Steve's hand and pulls him outside. "I know what conversation you want to have," Tony tells him as he shuts the glass doors. "We're having it in private."

"What conversation is that?" Steve says, looking amused, dammit, and Tony wants to kiss that smile off his mouth. Dammit.

"You and me. Us. There wasn't one. I swear, Steve, I thought there was but unless my memories aren't fully restored yet --"

"I don't remember that either," Steve admits, the smile disappearing. "I guess you're right. There wasn't an us."

"Right." Tony deflates with disappointment. "Well. This is awkward. Sorry I jumped your bones."

"I'm not complaining." He leans against the wall beside Tony, his hands behind his back. "It was kind of great, you know."

Tony smiles a little and looks at him. "Yeah?"

Steve looks at Tony steadily. "Yeah." There's a pause, as if they're both waiting for the other to speak, and then Steve says as Tony is inhaling, "Tony, I know there wasn't an us, but that's no reason for there not to be an us now."

"I thought we were in love."

"I think we were," Steve says, still steady and calm, and _God_ if that isn't one of the things Tony loves about him. Dammit. "That wasn't a lie or a false memory or a reaction to a strange situation. That was true, true enough to break Loki's spell."

"Steve, I--" He shakes his head.

"I love you," Steve says. "And now I know why. I remember why. I think before, neither of us really had the courage to take that step and admit the truth, but when there was nothing in our way --" He smiles. It's so beautiful. Dammit. "Nothing was in our way."

"You can talk me into anything, can't you?" Tony breathes.

"I think it's mutual, honey."

"Steve," Tony says and now he knows how perfectly he fits into Steve's arms, how easily their mouths come together, and he wants it, he wants it until he draws his last breath, and he want it to start _right now_.

Steve feels the same, if the way he kisses back is any clue.

***

"My body fought against forgetting you," Tony says when they've kissed and touched their fill. (For now, anyway.) "I think that's where the migraines came from. I wanted to remember so badly that only physical pain could stop it from happening."

"That doesn't explain why I could make the pain go away," Steve says thoughtfully.

Tony shakes his head. "No, it explains it exactly. When you touched me, my body knew you. Trusted you. Even when up here," he taps his temple, "it was all fractured and broken, the rest of me knew who you were."

Steve gazes at him in the way that makes Tony want to turn away and hold him closer at the same time, because who could handle being looked at like you're everything to someone like Steve? And how can you bear not to be that everything? "C'mere," Steve says, tugging on his shoulder, and Tony goes and relaxes against him with a sigh. Steve combs his fingers through Tony's hair, and then says softly, just as Tony has begun to drift, "Poor Loki."

Tony snorts. "Don't waste any sympathy on him. He's got none for us."

"Still, I pity him. You know why he did this, I think? Jealousy. We have what he refuses to accept anymore. His parents want him back. Thor wants him back. They don't want to punish him, not really, but they do because they must, because he keeps on hurting people. They'd rather he come home as their son again."

"And what's this wonderful thing we have?"

Steve snuggles down against the pillows so that they're touching again, tips of their noses, knees, shared breath. "Each other, Tony. Family." He kisses Tony's forehead. "Let's get some sleep. I want to dream."

"Sleep sweet," Tony murmurs, thinking he won't sleep because watching Steve is such a pleasure.

He's never been so happy to be wrong.

END

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [oh, how i've been looking](https://archiveofourown.org/works/806242) by [verilyvexed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verilyvexed/pseuds/verilyvexed)




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